one last night.

"He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a public
boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was
a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too. It was the
night afore the great race, when I found him on the heath, in a booth
that I know'd on. Him and some more was a sitting among the tables when
I went in, and the landlord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a
sporting one) called him out, and said, 'I think this is a man that
might suit you,'--meaning I was.

"Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a
watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of
clothes.

"'To judge from appearances, you're out of luck,' says Compeyson to me.

"'Yes, master, and I've never been in it much.' (I had come out of
Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have
been for something else; but it warn't.)

"'Luck changes,' says Compeyson; 'perhaps yours is going to change.'

"I says, 'I hope it may be so. There's room.'

"'What can you do?' says Compeyson.

"'Eat and drink,' I says; 'if you'll find the materials.'

"Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me five
shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place.

"I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson took me on
to be his man and pardner. And what was Compeyson's business in which we
was to go pardners? Compeyson's business was the swindling, handwriting
forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as
Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get
the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business.
He'd no more heart than a iron file, he was as cold as death, and he had
the head of the Devil afore mentioned.

"There was another in with Compeyson, as was called Arthur,--not as
being so chrisen'd, but as a surname. He was in a Decline, and was a
shadow to look at. Him and Compeyson had been in a bad thing with a
rich lady some years afore, and they'd made a pot of money by it; but
Compeyson betted and gamed, and he'd have run through the king's taxes.
So, Arthur was a dying, and a dying poor and with the horrors on him,
and Compeyson's wife (which Compeyson kicked mostly) was a having pity
on him when she could, and Compeyson was a having pity on nothing and
nobody.

"I might a took warning by Arthur, but I didn't; and I won't